Buy an operating plan, not a promise of rankings
SEO proposals often bundle research, audits, content and reporting under the same label. That does not mean they buy the same service. An agency that identifies problems but leaves implementation to your team has a different remit from one that edits templates, publishes content and verifies the changes.
Google describes SEO services as including site reviews, technical advice, content development and keyword research in its guidance on hiring an SEO. The buyer’s job is to turn those broad activities into named deliverables, responsibilities and acceptance criteria.
When comparing SEO agencies, ask for an example of the work you will receive—not just a presentation about past results.
Technical SEO should end with verified changes
A technical audit is a diagnosis, not a completed repair. The useful deliverable is a prioritized backlog that explains the issue, the affected pages, the proposed correction and the person responsible for implementation.
Depending on your website, the scope might cover:
- **Crawling and indexing:** reviewing which important pages search engines can access and which URLs should stay out of search.
- **Site structure:** improving navigation, internal links and the relationship between categories, products or services.
- **Duplicate URLs:** reviewing canonical tags, redirects, filters and parameter handling.
- **Templates and rendering:** checking whether important content and links are available in the rendered page.
- **Release protection:** testing migrations and website changes before launch, then checking them afterwards.
Ask whether the agency can make changes directly, must submit developer tickets or only supplies recommendations. Each arrangement can work; an unstated dependency cannot.
For redesigns, make sure your web design agency and SEO team share a release checklist. Otherwise, each supplier may assume the other owns redirects, navigation and post-launch checks.
Performance work needs defined thresholds
A proposal promising to “improve site speed” needs more precision. Loading performance and interaction responsiveness measure different experiences, so they should not be treated as interchangeable scores.
Google’s published timing boundaries provide useful reference points:
- **Largest Contentful Paint, good boundary:** at or below **2,500 milliseconds**, according to the LCP documentation.
- **Largest Contentful Paint, poor boundary:** above **4,000 milliseconds**, according to the LCP documentation.
- **Interaction to Next Paint, good boundary:** at or below **200 milliseconds**, according to the INP documentation.
- **Interaction to Next Paint, poor boundary:** above **500 milliseconds**, according to the INP documentation.
These are experience thresholds, not promises of ranking improvements. Ask the agency to distinguish real-user field measurements from controlled lab tests and explain how it will verify a fix after deployment.
Content work starts before writing
Keyword research should lead to decisions about pages, not merely a spreadsheet of phrases. A useful content plan explains the audience’s question, the appropriate page type, the business objective and whether an existing page can satisfy the need.
The work might involve improving a service page, consolidating overlapping articles, clarifying a product category or commissioning original expert material. Publishing something new should be a decision, not the default deliverable.
Request a sample brief containing:
- The intended reader and the decision the page should support.
- The page’s purpose and relationship to existing content.
- Questions to answer and evidence needed from your team.
- Editorial ownership, subject-matter review and approval steps.
- Internal links and a plan for reviewing the page after publication.
If the contract includes writing, clarify whether interviews, editing, imagery, uploading and revisions are included. If it includes recommendations only, confirm who has capacity to produce them.
Where production is substantial, compare the offer with specialist content marketing agencies. You may need editorial expertise alongside technical SEO, rather than expecting the same team to excel at everything.
AI answer visibility belongs in scope—with limits
AI answer visibility means investigating whether and how a business appears in generated answers, then improving the underlying material those systems may use. It should not be sold as a guaranteed placement service.
For Google specifically, its AI features guidance says established SEO practices remain relevant and that no additional technical requirements or special schema are necessary for inclusion in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That guidance should not be generalized into a promise about every other answer engine.
A credible scope can include:
- Checking whether commercially important pages are accessible and eligible for indexing.
- Making service descriptions, product facts and organizational information explicit and consistent.
- Improving the clarity and sourcing of answers on relevant pages.
- Monitoring an agreed set of buyer questions across named platforms.
- Recording prompts, dates, locations and cited URLs so observations are auditable.
A guaranteed citation rate is **not published** in Google’s AI features guidance. Treat a supplier’s visibility score as its own measurement unless it explains the source, sample and calculation.
Ask AEO and GEO agencies to separate observed mentions, linked citations and visits. Those are different outcomes, and a screenshot of an answer cannot establish business impact.
Authority work should be inspectable
If a proposal includes link acquisition or digital PR, ask what the agency will actually do: develop original material, pitch journalists, reclaim relevant unlinked mentions or something else.
Require disclosure of placements, outreach methods, subcontractors and any payments to publishers. You should be able to understand the activity without accepting a proprietary label as an explanation.
Google’s SEO hiring guidance warns buyers about deceptive practices and ranking guarantees. Use that as a reason to request transparency, not as a reason to reject all legitimate publicity or outreach.
Reporting should connect delivery to outcomes
A useful report separates what changed from what happened afterwards. It should also explain what the team learned and what it proposes to do next.
Ask for reporting that distinguishes:
- **Delivery:** fixes released, pages updated and work awaiting approval.
- **Search performance:** relevant landing pages, queries, clicks and indexing issues.
- **Business outcomes:** qualified enquiries, purchases or other agreed conversions.
- **Limitations:** tracking changes, consent effects, seasonality and attribution gaps.
For AI-related reporting, Google says traffic from its AI features is included within overall Web search reporting in Search Console in its AI features documentation. An agency should therefore explain what comes from platform reporting and what comes from its own monitoring rather than presenting everything as directly attributable AI traffic.
Keep analytics, search platform and website accounts under your organization’s control, with appropriate agency access.
Test the proposal before signing
Use the same practical exercise with each shortlisted supplier: ask it to explain how it would handle a representative problem on your site.
Look for a coherent chain from diagnosis to implementation and verification. Ask:
- What evidence would confirm that this problem deserves attention?
- What exactly would you deliver, and what would we need to provide?
- Who would approve and implement the change?
- How would you check that it worked technically?
- What outcome would you monitor, and what could obscure the result?
- What would change in the plan if the expected improvement did not appear?
Then compare contracts for exclusions, approval dependencies, ownership of work and handover arrangements. Our guide to choosing an SEO agency provides a broader selection framework.
The strongest proposal is not necessarily the longest. It is the one that makes the work inspectable, assigns responsibility and explains the limits of what the agency can control.